«To the Four Winds»

«I like it when things cross each other, tie together like a knitwork and when life surrounds a creation »

He named his Company « La Compagnie du Sillage » (The Wake Company) so to outline his link with the audience in movement and duration. Over the past 15 years, Jacques Fargearel has built with the Val-de-Marne district a peculiar choreographic adventure : he has been dancing with children. This unusual project immediately attracted the attention of the audience, of the Conseil Général (District Council) which allowed him some funds, of the Biennale (Two yearly dance festival) which ordered him his first play in 1994 and of the local towns which invited him (they still do) : Maisons-Alfort, Le Perreux, Fresnes, Créteil, Champigny. It is in Orly, where the company has its residence for the three next years, that he created his last play : To The Four Winds.

In this play, the choreographer explores - with a combination of duos danced by a man, a woman, a little boy and a little girl – 4 emotional states related to the colours of the winds. The chinook is a warm wind coming down from the mountains ; the breva is a breeze from the valleys of the italian lake region ; the borée is a northern wind and the khamsin is a sand wind from the deserts of Egypt. The duos carry on, each one of them offering us a specific angle : complicity and game, absence and distance, fusion and admiration, disagreement and violence…

Fom « Félix » (1994), his first play where two men were dancing with two children , until « Sitting On The Edge Of The World » (2002) in which a trio explores the place of a child in a couple, J. Fargearel has always been working on human feelings, outbursts, conflicts ; all these emotions which can emerge between an adult and a child. Through running, moving, following paths and rhythms, between strength and fragility, the choreographer offers us to witness how the bodies live and play with their difference, how each one of them is dynamically linked to the other . To The Four Winds goes deeper in this opened search.

A creation is always a climax in the life of a dance company. For this one, Jacques Fargearel felt like going further than just sharing moments with us during one or two evenings on a theater stage. He imagined a totally different approach. At first he decided to play his « Four Winds » at the four corners of the Val-de-Marne, like a « stroll » from town to town. Then he filled his suitcase with all the things a dance company can offer : presentation workshops in the local schools and academies, training dance sessions, classes for those, however old or young they are, who want to dance together, a public ball for the local population… and a glimpse on their former works.

Originally a school teacher, Jacques Fargearel is really attached to all this mediation process. Maybe because he discovered dance himself when he was just a school kid. « In High school, it is much easier to go play football than to the dance class. But i was lucky enoug to meet a teacher who helped me to reinforce my desire to dance. This is why i claim, in a militant way , the need of art lessons in our schools. For my own part, i know they fed my choreographic works . »

It is actually by observing on many occasions children at play that he was striked by their own way of using any space given, of moving in spontaneous choreographies mixing risks and precision. Then, teaching movement appeared to him as obligatory as any other learning. Therefore, he started hosting workshops in the schools and focused his creative work on the adult/child relationship. But it was never to use the children as onlookers or to make them appear as « baby dancers » - « Their movement must remain fragile and clumsy. A child is not miniature adult. » he tells us. « It is a strong artistic choice » states Michel Caserta, the president of two-yearly Val-de-Marne dance festival who also questions about where does the child stand in our society and the space given to childhood around us.